


only the strong survive

by fairlyhonourabledefeat



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, And then Lovers to Enemies?, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Slow Burn Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith, Spies & Secret Agents, There should be a tag for Faustus is Terrible, Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29153100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairlyhonourabledefeat/pseuds/fairlyhonourabledefeat
Summary: 'One last job. Zelda Spellman reminded herself — after this one she could settle, dedicate herself to the task of making London her home again.'After years out in Europe, never staying in one place for long, Agent Zelda Spellman is back in London for one final mission. Working with the woman who double-crossed her niece was never supposed to be part of the deal.
Relationships: Zelda Spellman & Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith, Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 82
Kudos: 94





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> dumb! quarantine! fic! writing! alert! 
> 
> in an attempt to bring myself a bit of joy in these dark times i thought i would write my fave tropes (spy!au & fake dating) into one fic - it was perfect for madam spellman because, hello, did someone say enemies to friends to lovers? 
> 
> title from the beautiful laura marling song 'only the strong'.  
> if you read and enjoy let me know and i will keep going!

It was unpleasant to feel like a stranger in a city she had once called home. The London that loomed around Zelda Spellman, the people, buses and buildings that crowded and jostled her as she made her way along the Thames, was actually now no more familiar to her than all those far off, imagined places trapped behind television screens or in the glossy pages of in-flight brochures. Thirty long years on the other side of the world had left her with a rather romantic idea of these streets — she held in her head a flimsy, if vibrantly illustrated, storybook London. The real thing was, as such, bound to be a disappointment.

As if in conference with the dissolution of her romantic notions, the dark clouds above – which had announced themselves mere minutes after she’d left her hotel for the tube – ripped open their seams, peppering and then utterly drenching them all with a burst of freezing rain. True Londoners were prepared, they signalled their fraternity in a smattering of suddenly-appearing umbrellas. Zelda scowled, pressing her hands to her already soaking hair purposelessly, self-consciously. She marched on past the white, Regency buildings, with an up-turned nose, pointedly unperturbed by the darkening of her light trench coat, the potential damage to her silk scarf.

 _One last job._ She reminded herself — after this one she could settle, dedicate herself to the task of making London her home again.

* * *

The offices of MI6 were considerably less glamorous than the books and films made them out to be, the people at least ten times less. The mousy receptionist and her tan tights were not decoys, there was no button you pressed to reveal the ‘real’ intelligence services, all futuristic black panelling and the like. The inside of the waiting room, too, had not changed much while she had been away. The same formal paintings of old, white men stared down, balanced precariously above baroque panelling.

She sipped at her coffee absentmindedly, the clock hands slid past her allotted time slot. She was in no particular rush. This meeting would dictate her imminent future and until then she was in limbo, between lives and countries, no one until she was briefed on the someone she was to become.

* * *

When M finally deigned to see Zelda, she was chaperoned through a series of corridors to the heart of the Institute, thoroughly patted down and her handbag confiscated before she was allowed to enter the office. As this standard vetting procedure took place, Zelda took great pleasure in mentally identifying all the places she _could_ have stored a weapon, had she so desired, such was the incompetency of the young woman carrying out the checks. Intelligent technology had come so far in the last decade or so, there was so little potential danger such a rudimentary physical could actually identify. She could be storing explosives or ammunition in her brooch, in the cavities of her teeth, under her perfectly manicured fingernails. London always had seemed behind the times, slow on the uptake. Indeed, the man to whom she must report, grey and wizened behind his desk, was another relic from the past. Would they see a woman in that seat within her lifetime? Some days it seemed unlikely. Some areas of society remained an old boy’s club no matter how the rest of the world rolled on towards enlightenment, perpetually locked in the stasis of their archaic ideals.

M was not alone, as she had expected. Instead one of the two chairs opposite his desk was occupied by a dark-haired woman of around her own age, dressed head-to-foot in sleek black, finished off with a sweeping dark leather coat. Zelda was visibly amused by these sartorial choices, barely able to keep a smug little smile off her face as she slipped into her chair, with a nod to her superior. “Did I miss the memo about the costume party?” She asked, in lieu of greeting to the woman beside her. It was catty, perhaps, but _really_ , who actually swanned around in a black turtleneck like a badly-paid James Bond extra? They’d had a Christmas party one year there at HQ with a traditional ‘spy’ theme and even then Zelda had found the whole thing somewhat gauche, trivialising even.

The other woman raised her head with a look of grim displeasure, her clear blue eyes were cool with disdain as they met Zelda’s for the first time. “And did you forget to change on your way back from your assignment at the old people’s home?” The brunette replied, no defensiveness in her tone, only the silky smooth confidence of someone who knew they posed real danger. _Touché_ , Zelda bowed her head slightly in signal of her retreat. She did feel her age beside this well-polished example, whose hair was meticulously curled, lips rouged, boots heeled. She ran a hand through her own hair, still damp, and turned her inquisitive gaze back to the man behind the desk, the man with all the answers.

“I can already tell you two are going to get on like a house on fire,” M nodded serenely, as if he’d observed quite a different first interaction to Zelda, “Lilith, as I was saying, this is Zelda Spellman, one of our finest field agents. She’s been out in Europe for… well, has it been decades?” Zelda scowled at this unneeded reminder of her age, aware at the edge of her eye-line that the other woman was surveying her with what might as well have been infrared vision, for all Zelda could feel the gaze on her skin like a physical thing. Probably counting wrinkles.

“Quite,” she nodded, lips pursed, when she realised M was waiting for some signal of acknowledgement.

“You might remember Agent Lilith Danica from your niece Sabrina’s first field mission –– nasty business out there in St. Petersburg, as you might remember, but I have Lilith’s word that it was all an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

As Zelda’s mind raced to recall the details of Sabrina’s mission, to place this woman within the narrative, Lilith nodded solemnly with all the faux-reverence of a repenting sinner, placing a hand to her chest in mocking sincerity. “I’m a reformed character,” she insisted, in her ambiguous accent, which now it had been pin-pointed perhaps did have a Slavic edge to it. Lilith’s eyes glittered like someone on the brink of laughter. Then, it clicked: Zelda launched herself out of her chair.

“You _bitch_ ,” Zelda spat, turning quickly on Lilith and grabbing her by the coat lapels with such force that she was almost lifting the other woman out of her seat. Though blind-sided with rage, she was lucid enough to wish that she had smuggled in some discrete weapon, so that she could use it to remove this woman’s smirking head from her neck. Lilith’s face remained unmoved.

Zelda’s niece, Sabrina Spellman, had finished her initial training just that year, and been immediately shipped off to Eastern Europe on what had seemed to be a simple reconnaissance exercise. It was a mission to be completed in tandem with Russian authorities, Sabrina would be learning on the job. She’d been assigned to Mariya Wardwell, a Russian agent with apparent Anglo-American sympathies. Zelda vividly remembered Sabrina’s description of the woman for her remarkable ordinariness: wool skirts and unflattering shoes, hair pulled back and peering through thick glasses. Hardly what you would expect from a mentor, especially for someone as vibrant as Sabrina.

Many weeks later, after agents had managed to recover Sabrina (bruised and shaken, but essentially unscathed), Zelda learned about the scandal that had occurred over the phone, from her apartment in Paris. The timid Mariya Wardwell had successfully double-crossed them all. She had not only lied about her identity, but about a connection to Zelda’s brother and Sabrina’s late father, Edward Spellman, in an attempt to get the young girl on side. All of this formed part of a broader insidious plot to - it seemed - offer up Sabrina to notorious crime lord Luke Morningstar, providing a bargaining chip with which to negotiate with the British Intelligence Services. It was made clear that it was unimportant to the plan whether Sabrina actually made it home alive.

“Now, now, Spellman,” M soothed, looking relatively unalarmed by this outburst, “like I said, there has been a misunderstanding.”

“She tried to _sell_ my niece on the black market,” Zelda seethed, her knuckles white against inflexible leather of Lilith’s jacket. Each word was punctuated. “Tell me which part I am misunderstanding.”

“I wouldn’t have gone through with it,” Lilith blinked up at her, still placid despite Zelda’s violent reaction. Her eyes were like calm waters, still lakes. This made Zelda angrier. “Nobody hates Morningstar more than I do. It was just part of my plan to get him –– properly this time.” Zelda’s grip loosened incrementally, though her frown did not. Lilith’s lips curled into something which might have been a self-satisfied smile on anyone else, but on her, looked more like a grimace. Fearing she’d conceded too easily, Zelda stabbed one sharply manicured fingernail into the soft flesh between Lilith’s collarbones, just hard enough to hurt. 

“Enough Spellman, sit down now,” M insisted, his tone never surpassing the threat level of ‘perturbed school master’. The lack of recognition on Lilith’s face made Zelda feel unspeakably embarrassed, out of control of the situation even as she pinned the other woman in her chair. It would have been more satisfying if she had bitten back, and Lilith seemed to know this, silently meeting her eyes with the radiant calm of a vengeful celestial being.

“If you go within a six foot radius of that girl ever again, I’ll separate your limbs from your torso,” Zelda said, choking back in the inner dust-storm of anger and forcing herself to back off. Returned to her own seat, she wrestled out of her trench coat, sudden flushed and over-heating, and then quickly feeling over-exposed in her pedestrian black dress. She ghosted a hand over her face in frustration and gestured to M to get on with things. She wanted to be lying face-down on the cool sheets of her hotel-room bed.

The elderly man cleared his throat with an authoritative air, and continued with the breezy swiftness of the diplomat she knew he had once been. “Let’s cut to the chase. All the details are in these case files,” he slid two identical blue binders across the desk for the women to receive. “Faustus Blackwood is back in the city and this might be our final chance to take him down before he crosses out of EU territory – our sources believe he’s set to fly to New York in ten days time. Spellman, you’ll recall previous attempts to bring Blackwood in for his part in arms deals and connections to various international drug-smuggling rings. He’s slippery and if we lose him this time we may lose him for good.”

While Zelda had never directly encountered Faustus Blackwood herself, she’d had the considerable displeasure of run-ins with a number of his ‘disciples’, particularly in Berlin. Aside from this, nobody was in a hurry to forget the sorry fates of Agents Dorcas and Agatha Night, girls barely out of training, perhaps a year - at most - older than Sabrina. For this reason alone, letting him slip away unpunished was not an option.

“What is in this for you?” She addressed Lilith directly, but it was M who answered by drawing a pixelated print-out - taken from a piece of CCTV footage - from a manila envelope, and sliding it across the table. In the image, two dark-haired men in sharp suits stood huddled over a conspicuous package. While the contents was hidden, their faces were easily discernible. “He works for Morningstar,” Zelda realised, answering her own question.

“Two birds, one stone,” Lilith agreed, drawing the point of a black fingernail across the men’s paper necks. The look of pure malice on Lilith’s face as she leant over the photo, the set of her jaw, would have been explanation enough.

“Alright, but how in hell do _we_ get anywhere near them?” Zelda raised her eyebrows, gesturing to herself and Lilith collectively in an action that felt utterly alien. “And why her? Why us?”

M interlaced his fingers and leant over the table like a man about to break extremely delicate news. “A little over a month ago we began to intercept messages between Blackwood and a famously elusive Swiss heiress, who goes only by Countess Lenzburg. We believe some associates of Blackwood’s in Bern arranged the communication, setting the Countess up as a buyer for something Blackwood is trying to get rid of. Luckily, to call this woman a technophobe would be an understatement. She doesn’t exist anywhere on the internet, it is impossible to find out anything about her even with the best tools. There’s no digital trace. She’s fastidiously private and seems to have shared almost no details about herself with Blackwood. She’s rich enough that this has not slowed him down, and secretive enough to provide the perfect disguise for you.” He nodded to Zelda.

“And her?” Zelda pressed, “What’s she to be? My guard dog?”

“Not quite. You see, the one detail the Countess did convey to Blackwood - in her final message before our fortunate interception - was that if she was ever to visit him in London as he had suggested, she would have to be accompanied by her new wife, who, as an art historian and academic, would be entirely essential to her in an advisory capacity.”

Zelda swallowed thickly, whipping her head round to look at Lilith, whose face still hadn’t uncurled from that infuriating half-smile.

“My wife?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who let me know they enjoyed yesterday's snippet – this update is really just the brief second half of the first chapter (i got over-excited yesterday and wanted to get something up!)
> 
> expect longer chapters going forward as we get deeper into the espionage! i'm so excited
> 
> if you want to feel emotional, you can imagine the song something to believe in by wet playing us out at the end of this chapter, echoing out of a just-opening restaurant or something as lilith watches zelda go:  
> https://open.spotify.com/track/2dQ9BAfj2FlUqCG1TikQzZ?si=z4CdbhCOTc-DcKwQ2A70jw

They step into the lift together in silence. Once the doors had slid shut, Zelda made her move. Reunited with her handbag, she had a handful more tools at her disposal. Nail-file to the jugular was a messy way to take someone down, sure - her knowledge of this was not solely theoretical - but to hell with it, her scarf was already ruined. It was a testament to Lilith’s resolve to prove herself ‘on Zelda’s side’, as M had so sickeningly put it it, that she barely flinched as Zelda once again pressed a sharp utensil to her neck. Either that, or this reaction was the product of some deep familiarity with finding herself in such a position. Such was the irritating quality of Lilith’s face, that Zelda deemed the latter more plausible.

“God you’re slow, Spellman. I’m so sorry they left you out to rust on the continent,” Lilith drawled, her voice low, her expression still unreadable. Zelda’s stomach shifted as if she’d left her internal organs on the top floor; she could only hear the quiet _swish_ of the falling lift mechanism and their shared breath. How could she say that when Zelda so clearly had the upper hand?

The lift _ping_ ed and Lilith effortlessly shook Zelda off in one swift manoeuvre: one hand to her elbow, one gripped on the pulse point of her wrist. She wasn’t sure how or when the other woman dislodged the make-shift weapon from her hand, but it glinted as Lilith flipped and caught it single-handedly, backing out of the lift doors into the basement as they opened once more.

“Aunt Zee!” Ambrose’s voice emerged from somewhere amongst the chaos, the familiarity of it encouraging her to step out of that metal coffin. Appropriately, several of her brain cells seemed to have chosen that moment to die.

She’d met with Ambrose and his new girlfriend, Prudence, for dinner the previous evening, along with her Hilda and Dr. Cerberus. She’d missed their spring wedding, being staked out in Vienna and almost three months into a mission to infiltrate a growing terrorist cell. It had broken Zelda’s heart. If Hilda had supposed Zelda disapproved of her commitment to Cerberus –– the man _was_ an idiot, a film studies professor with an affection for old horror flicks –– she had vowed to herself to make it all right in time for the wedding. The sisters had shopped together in Paris for Zelda’s maid of honour dress and now the offending item was crumpled in her suitcase, unworn and neglected, a pastel reminder of the spring, of a seed failed to grow, of what she might do differently, given a second chance.

To compensate, she had tried far too hard over dinner, interrogating Cerberus on his work, demanding every detail of the honeymoon, pestering Prudence about the Académie and the students (it had been Zelda’s work there that had clandestinely brought the young couple together). As they left the restaurant in a muddle of scarves, coats and white clouds of fogged breath, Hilda had placed fingers on Zelda’s inner arm, concern evident on her face. “What’s wrong?” she’d asked. Her typical patience and sweetness, her soft vanilla perfume, those ridiculous earrings –– it had been enough to bring an uncomfortable lump to Zelda’s throat. She’d mutely shook her head, but everyone present had noted her damp eyes as they assembled themselves, buttoning coats, hugging goodbye, promising next-times, even as they pretended they did not.

Zelda was back in the city with the resolution of any number of unmoveable items: she was back like the stones of a ruin, like the nails in a coffin, like the final chapter of a book. The next time her family needed her, there’d be no question of where she’d be.

The sprawling dimness of the basement had the saturated quality of an old painting, perhaps as a consequence of its single pavement-level window, which only ever admitted the most peculiar of lights, or perhaps because of the sheer build up of objects on every surface, which appeared in spontaneously occurring constellations around the room: screws, lightbulbs, blades, circuit boards, bullets, strips of neon, film roll, glass bottles and long tubes containing iridescent liquids. Every object cast a long shadow in the prematurely dimming light, like a mass of pointing fingers that were all trained towards Lilith, who had now propped herself up against a worktop, flicking through her case file, disinterested. She’d positioned herself in the only patch of external light, the long, horizontal window casting a golden box across half of her face; the chiaroscuro effect was oddly complemented by the metallic file tucked neatly behind her ear, like a forgotten pencil.

“Ambrose, this is Lilith,” Zelda announced in no particular direction, unsure as to where the man might appear from. First his head, clad in safety goggles, then the rest of him, emerged from behind the open doors of a tall metal cabinet in a shadowy back corner. So offensively loud was his paisley shirt that it seemed impossible that he’d been out of sight for even a moment amidst all these muted greens and greys. “She–“

“We’ve met,” both parties replied, in solemn unison. Zelda shot Ambrose a sharp look of betrayal that she couldn’t fully account for herself. Was she the only person who remembered what had happened to Sabrina out there in the January snow?

“See, I left _this_ member of your rag-tag group of cheery orphan children completely unharmed,” Lilith added, with the pleasant air of someone commenting on the weather, still without bothering to lift her eyes from her booklet. This only added to the disquieting effect that she was actively reading Zelda’s mind. It was completely unnerving. Just in case, on the off chance, Zelda momentarily allowed herself to dwell in a particularly graphic fantasy about the considerable pleasure it would bring her to break the other woman’s nose in a single blow. In her youth, she’d been renowned for the surprising strength behind her punches.

She sent Lilith a withering look, which she hoped successfully held within it all the silent and unpleasant things she was leaving unspoken, and joined her adoptive nephew at the centre of the room, where a selection of useful instruments had been laid out for them. “You could have warned me, Ambrose, for christ’s sake,” she muttered, only for his ears. He ducked his head shamefully and Zelda was pleased, at least, to have retained authority over something in her life.

“I would never talk shop at the dinner table,” he shrugged, and she did feel grateful to have had one whole evening just for them, without all of this.

She cleared her throat in a manner she hoped would also clear the air, arranging her face into a beacon of professionalism. This was the Zelda Spellman you were most likely to encounter on an average day: brisk, detached, proper. “What are we taking in?”

“As little as possible,” Ambrose said, handing over a small handgun for her to feel its delicate weight. “It folds away,” he explained, and right on cue she located the small buttons that snapped the weapon in on itself, like an army knife. She muttered her approval –– it was small enough to store in a coin purse.

“Of course, Auntie, you can’t take anything flash in there with you. Blackwood is no fool. You both have to appear convincingly helpless—“

“She won’t need help with that,” Lilith chipped in with a sarcastic little salute, a two-finger tap to her temple. Still she didn’t raise her eyes from the page,

The nudge of Ambrose’s shoulder against her’s implored Zelda not to retaliate, and she swallowed whatever half-hearted retort she’d been about to cut back with. Thin yellow tape on the worktop demarcated a space for each item they would need, for Lilith on the right, and for Zelda on the left. For the most part, the two halves of the table were a mirror image of each other, bar a series of gaps where a number of Lilith’s smaller personal effects had already been collected. Zelda took the simple gold wedding band from the top of her section and silently slid it on to her ring finger. At least it wasn’t some flashy diamond, she supposed.

“You may now kiss the bride,” Ambrose teased tentatively, with a nod of his head towards Lilith’s matching ring, which was elevated into sight as she studied the casebook, squinting slightly as though she could use the assistance of a pair of glasses. She’d been wearing the ring all this time, it seemed.

“Only two small letters between kiss and kill,” Zelda observed, spinning the band on her long finger, her mouth settled into an uncompromisingly tight line.

* * *

Dusk had settled in earnest by the time the two women finally resurfaced onto the waterside, the Thames reflecting a soft palette of Impressionistic oranges, purples and pinks. It was a surprisingly picturesque display — the blotted aftermath of neon on the water was a balm for weary eyes. Zelda’s cheeks stung, flushed red with the cold. The wind dismantled Lilith’s tamed curls, strands of hair tangled into her face, catching in her eyelashes and sticking to dry lips. A sense of unreality prevailed out here, at one remove from the compelling fantasies of authority and composure built into the architecture of the institution they had spent the afternoon enclosed in. A whole afternoon of planning and processing, barbed remarks and cold looks. What were they out here by the river but two complete strangers, shoulders bowing under the collective weight of a shared task? The darkness echoed their silence and Zelda pulled out a cigarette, the flame of her lighter quivering reluctantly to life. If Lilith minded being enveloped in a plume of pale smoke, she said nothing. There was something classical, picturesque about the gauntness of her face as it emerged from those tendrils of cigarette smoke, like a menacing omen, a harbinger of some terrible, bleakly beautiful future tragedy. It was not a face easily forgotten.

Silence clearly weighed heavier on Zelda than her new colleague. Lilith seemed more than content to sit in the thick stillness of the quiet between them, while Zelda felt it dragging her down like rising waters, rolling around her neck.

“I can’t trust you,” Zelda said, looking out at the water, noting how the sheets of motionless granite water seemed to hold their breath in tandem with Lilith beside her. Since they’d met she’d been all sure confidence, drawling sarcasm and long limbs crossed nonchalantly; but now she was coiled, stiffened. If something that could have been mistaken for apology entered Zelda’s voice, she blamed it on the soothing back and forth of normality that lapped around them now: teenagers ducking into the nearest tube station in loose packs, couples languorously walking the length of the river, businessmen and secretaries and fathers and schoolchildren borne home by the current of habit into the comforting pool of linear time.

“Good,” Lilith replied, “I was beginning to think they taught you nothing out here.”

Zelda scoffed, releasing breathy clouds of smoke, ash tumbling down over the railings into the water below them. “And I don’t like you either.”

“Then we’re on the same page.”

A nod. “Then we’re on the same page.” Wordlessly, without a goodbye, Zelda turned and walked away, letting the evening crowd swallow her whole, carried - she believed - on snatches of song and chatter, into obscurity.

Leaning against the railing with the skyline at her shoulder, Lilith watched Zelda slip into the crowd, watching that snatch of amber fold into the tangle of darkness. She turns back to the water, thinks of copper wire, dead leaves, the burning ends of cigarettes, the fox on the side of road, the heartbeat in the moment of patience at an amber light.

Later, when Zelda reaches for her hotel key in her coat pocket, her fingers instead close around the cool metal of a nail file.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all aboard the unedited nonsense train because the pining starts now! no thoughts! just vibes! brain shiny like a pebble! we're going 100% chaos from here on out so buckle up and prepare yourself seven whole chapters of emotional whiplash because there is nothing i love more than an Unfortunate Misunderstanding
> 
> this chapter's painful song is 'can i believe you' by fleet foxes, you're welcome

They were on the road early: Zelda driving, Lilith pretending to read a weighty hardback novel. Zelda knew she was pretending because she only turned a page every twenty minutes. On the back seats were their bags, packed by Ambrose’s people at the institute. She wasn’t looking forward seeing the selection from the Countess’ wardrobe they had provided her with. How did an eccentric middle-aged Swiss woman with more money than sense dress anyway? It had been a struggle to bite her tongue when Lilith herself had got into the passenger seat, bleary-eyed, clearly miserable about the early start. Her morose expression was made all the more amusing because she had been dressed - against her will, Zelda could only imagine, perhaps at gunpoint – in the sweetest little outfit: a calf-length dress in a bold, painterly print, sensible brogues, a wholesomely chunky blue knit, perfectly bookish wire glasses. She’d dropped into the car without a word and slammed the passenger door shut with such force that something inside the very framework of the vehicle made a distressing _crunch_. “You look–“, Zelda began.

“Don’t.”

And so she didn’t.

Since then Lilith had been busy burning holes in the pages of her book with her eyes alone. The book in question seemed to be not a novel, as she had thought, but Goethe’s _Faust_ in the original German, which Zelda had to admit was quite a funny choice for the trip. _Ziemlich lustig für ‘eine Tragödie’, nein?_ , she’d remarked when they’d pulled over to acquire takeaway coffee, leaning across to tap the spine of the book where it declared the play’s genre under the title.

“Well, sometimes things are tragically funny,” Lilith had agreed.

Indeed, _tragically funny_ seemed the best way to sum up their collective situation, Zelda’s realisation that this almost silent drive past Oxfordshire fields towards Faustus Blackwood’s country home was one of the most normal Sunday mornings she had spent in a very long time. Maybe it was the outfits, maybe they were pre-emptively pretending, maybe she could blame it on the gauzily wintery sunlight, the saccharine weekend radio, the caffeine addling her brain. She couldn’t exactly say it was nice to share a car with this woman – bored displeasure was emanating from her like a visibly pulsing shadow – but it was _something_.

She didn’t even realise she was vaguely smiling, fingers tapping along to an upbeat Joni Mitchell number coming on through the speakers, until Lilith snatched her sunglasses right from her face without warning, as if to confirm whether the pleasant expression was reaching Zelda’s eyes.

“Are you always this cheerful in the morning?”

Zelda gaped stupidly, rather affronted at having her space invaded like that, before retraining her eyes on the road. _Cheerful_ was certainly not in anyone’s vocabulary to describe Zelda Spellman, but all things were relative. Not everyone had the motivation to radiate pure dark matter twenty-four hours a day; not everyone was born grim and brooding and perfectly coiffed. 

“I like to drive,” she shrugged, spotting the first set of signs that suggested their turn off was fast approaching. “Are you usually anti-social?”

“You’ve caught me on a good day.” Lilith offered up a rather menacing smile, lips curling back over teeth. She slipped Zelda’s sunglasses onto her own face, rather triumphantly replacing those dowdy clear frames, which she stuffed unceremoniously into the glove compartment.

Over the radio, Joni wailed: _Oh! I hate you some, I hate you some, I love you some / Oh I love you when I forget about me._

* * *

Blackwood’s manor house was alarmingly well kept, and possibly would have quite frightened the breed of paranoid people who worry that just about anyone could be quietly involved in some terrible criminal enterprise: your neighbour, your dentist, the woman opposite you on the bus. Frankly the house looked both nothing and everything like the house of a profoundly evil man, all uncompromising brown brick and small eye-like windows and gargoyles in the driveway. Zelda had scoffed at those. The place was impressive only because of its sprawling size, acres of land stretching out behind it, fields embroidered with the far-off deer and clustered trees. The building itself was merely austere, giving the impression of a Victorian school for orphans or an asylum for women with fragile minds.

Faustus lay in wait for them at the top of the drive, a man at his side prepared to take the car and their things. In the last moment before Zelda cut the engine she looked to Lilith for reassurance, aware of Faustus’ eyes on them through the windscreen. “Ready?” she asked. In reply, Lilith just let herself out of the car, rolling right into an easy greeting with Faustus that soothed Zelda more than any empty nicety could have. As they exchanged cheek kisses in the typical European style, Zelda busied herself with a search for some imaginary item in the glove compartment, steading herself before the moment caught up with her.

“Mrs. Lenzburg –“

“That’s Dr. Lenzburg to you,” Lilith was correcting Faustus with a convincingly warm smile and an only gently berating tilt of the head, politely lifting Zelda’s sunglasses to prop them on her forehead. “No really, just Lilith, please.” The charming display was so well controlled from Lilith’s end, so expertly handled, that Zelda was completely transfixed by the showmanship of it all. It was like watching a snake slide right out of its skin before her, those darkly funereal garments Lilith had worn in the car discarded just beyond the passenger door. It was hard to watch because of the way it revealed the raw truth in the quiet of the car ride, that hour of near silence, the curling unhappiness she had made no attempts to disguise up until now, the hard set of her jaw on the bridge the previous night.

“My wife, she is nervous,” she was saying now, the perfect mixture of apologetic and amused – all tourist-talk and softly gestural hands. Zelda could even hear the slightest German lilt to her voice, effortlessly added. If she’d had any concerns about how they would pull this whole thing off they dissipated instantaneously. She didn’t trust Lilith, not for a moment, but for as long as the other woman chose to hold her through this, for as long as she kept her grip, Zelda felt she was in safe hands.

On cue she crossed over to join them, wobbling slightly on the gravel in her heels. It wasn’t hard to play demure and reserved, particularly when Faustus expected it from her –– she found people often saw much of what they wanted to in someone else. It was difficult to observe Blackwood close up, when one’s senses were so violently redirected to smelling him. He was well-marinated in some expensive musky scent: pine and bergamot. “A pleasure, Countess.”

“All mine, I’m sure,” she nodded, “but you must call me Zelda now, no? To make me feel at home.”

Faustus, who had clearly been expecting some difficulty, perhaps some language barrier, was emanating surprised pleasure at how smoothly this introduction was going. Zelda wondered if, when he looked at her, he saw her face fashioned in an origami of mint green bank notes, numerical values at the centre of her eyes. His expression seemed permanently hungry, like a starving dog. He wore too much gel, some had stuck to her temple where he had embraced her and was now drying coolly.

“Your book,” she held out the hardback to Lilith, which provided an excuse for her hesitation in the car and to now back out from under Faustus’ gaze. Lilith took it gratefully, curling it against her midriff. As they headed towards the front door, Blackwood enquired about it.

“Oh, just some Goethe,” Lilith replied breezily, quoting a passage in fluent German with the self-assured ease of a true scholar:

_Who holds the devil, let him hold him well,_

_He hardly will be caught a second time._

“You’ll excuse me,” Faustus shrugged, “my German is poor.” But Zelda smiled in quiet recognition. As they stepped across the threshold into Blackwood’s property, she reached for Lilith’s hand with all the trepidation of an anxious spouse. The other woman gripped her hand back, solidly, and briefly, Zelda dug her fingernails hard into the flesh of Lilith’s palm.

For the briefest moment, as they tailed Faustus down the tiled entry-hall, Lilith lifted up her perfectly-composed mask to show off that mouth full of shark-like teeth, just for Zelda.

* * *

The rest of the day past in a smudge of introductions and similar amusements: Faustus and his view, Faustus and his pool, Faustus and his wine cellar. He was every bit as self-involved as she’d imagined, equal parts selfish and belittling of those he considered beneath him. There was something menacing about the way he spoke about values, morals, expectations, standards –– from a man who had earnestly referred to his own house the ‘Church of Night’, for christ’s sake. When he’d turned his back for a moment to pour their drinks, Lilith had crossed herself sarcastically, and Zelda’s disgust had alleviated somewhat.

He watched their interactions with an intensity that Zelda didn’t know whether to pinpoint to suspicion or lechery, either way she was relieved when he had to excuse himself for the rest evening on business, promising to return later that night.

The moment they were free, she flopped on the double bed they were to share, one hand covering her eyes in a dramatic repose of fatigue. Lilith had been doing most of the talking – the Countess was, happily, still a paranoid introvert – but just sitting shoulder to shoulder with Lilith had taken it out of Zelda. She blamed it on the fact she felt too aware of her body under Faustus’ eye, too exposed.

Something lightly tickled the palm of her upturned hand, and she propped herself up with a start, expecting to discover an insect of some kind on their crisp sheets. Instead, Lilith loomed over her, dangling the wires of one of the microphones Ambrose had given them in case the opportunity to rig the house presented itself.

“Showtime, Spellman.” 

* * *

They’d made quick work of the main rooms of the house, with only one device left to place. The library living room at the centre of the house was clearly the heart and soul of Faustus’ fantasy about this place, it was a truly involved piece of self-creation: plum velvet curtains draped atop bay windows, oak panel upon oak panel upon oak panel, an old painting of a fox hunt, an abandoned glass of scotch at the table. Lilith whistled long and low, gravitating towards the plush patterned fabric of the antique chair by the window, running a hand over the back.

“Men,” tutted Zelda, finding herself face-to-face with an obnoxiously large set of deer antlers. They were always compensating for something.

“When this is all over, I’m coming back for this,” Lilith grinned, cat-like and possessive as she drew a beautiful ornamental sword out of its holder over the mantelpiece. It looked Spanish, perhaps, slightly tarnished gold, the hilt decorated with a delicate combination of rubies and emeralds. Lilith held it with great reverence, testing the point against the tip of one slender finger, and finding it adequate. Zelda swallowed thickly.

“Quit fooling around,” she warned with a look back at the closed door they’d just come from, instinctively batting the metal point out of her face when she found Lilith had turned the sword on her, only rolling her eyes. Still, her heart stuttered slightly in her chest –– the next time Lilith pointed a weapon in her face, would it be in earnest? She swept her red hair over one shoulder, running a hand through the curls absentmindedly as she scoured the room for the perfect place to rig their final microphone.

The bookshelves were neatly packed in an undisturbed way that suggested a lack of use, rows and rows of lovely hardbacks that had clearly barely been touched. When this job was over, Zelda thought, she would have time to read as many books as Faustus kept in this pretend library, twice as many. She would spend all of her time doing peaceful things – _why was her heart still racing?_ – and smoking cigarettes in picturesque places. Perhaps she’d even get a dog. There would be an endless symmetry of days spread out before her like trees and streetlights: buying flowers, visiting her sister, picking up dinner for Sabrina. Normal things, quiet things.

“Come give me a hand here,” she demanded, gesturing to the sliding ladder that lead to a mezzanine level, where even more books stretched up to the ceiling. Judging by the sediment of dust that seemed to have settled on the lowest shelf she could easily see, it was probably the perfect place to conceal something out of sight. It was clear no one was going to be reading these books, like most things in the house, they were mainly for show.

Lilith floated over without a sense of urgency, taking the device from Zelda’s outstretched hand.

“It’s all tangled, Spellman, see the wires–“

“Yes, I’m sorting it.”

“It has to be–“

“I’m not _blind_ ,” Zelda seethed, refusing to be patronised by Lilith, who - she was increasingly convinced - seemed completely incapable of saying anything nicely.

“Zelda–“ She held up a hand to silence Lilith, tired already of the bickering. They had a job to do.

“Zelda–” Lilith repeated, no doubt about to stop her from scaling the ladder, probably convinced she couldn’t do it. She clipped the mic to the plunging neckline of her dress for safe-keeping and had turned to begin her ascent, when she she was grabbed by the arm from behind.

Lilith backed her roughly against the ladder, the rungs digging uncomfortably into her lower back and thighs. _Great_ , Zelda thought, as she was crowded by the other woman’s body, invaded by blue on blue, _can’t say I didn’t see this one coming._ The speed of the betrayal still stung, like swallowing down acid. In the fraction of a second in which she anticipated the cool blade in her gut, at her neck, her brain raced through potential avenues for escape, but at the end of every dead end track there were Lilith’s eyes, so close now. All those teeth. She slammed her eyes shut in anticipation of sudden pain.

And then, more shocking still, there was Lilith’s mouth on hers. Lilith’s hand in her hair, on her hip, chest to chest ––– pushing as Zelda yielded.

She inhaled sharply against Lilith’s lips, the ladder protested their combined weight, and when Zelda remembered this moment later she would insist she heard the door to the library creak open. That was why, she thinks, she kissed back on instinct, one hand gripping the ladder behind her as if the floor would give way, one firmly in the wool of Lilith’s jumper, reeling her in closer still. She absolutely didn’t notice the open door for the very first time when they broke away, both breathless, Lilith’s hand coming to cover Zelda’s chest in an oddly tender gesture… one that hid the microphone pinned there from the aghast gaze of Blackwood’s man in the doorway, clearly just arrived to tidy the room before Faustus returned for the night.

Because she’d heard the footsteps approaching too, she thought. She must have heard them. She’d heard the footsteps and she’d heard the door open, even if all she remembered was the darkness, the press of Lilith’s body, the dig of hipbone, and the falling. She told herself this so many times, she began to believe it.

The poor guy retreated, apologising profusely, the cheeks and bridge of his nose the vibrant red of a person struggling to rid himself of a distressing mental image.

Briefly, neither of them moved. “Quick thinking,” Zelda nodded, rather too properly, before more hesitantly adding, “I actually thought you were going to kill me.” The laugh that escaped her bordered on hysteria.

Lilith splayed her fingers where they’d reached to hide the final microphone from sight, right over Zelda’s racing heart.

“Seems like I nearly did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today i offer you the '👀 ' emoji. tomorrow? who knows...


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes when people kiss - it is actually worse, or zelda has second thoughts about trusting lilith... and with good reason
> 
> this chapter's sad song is: faith healer by julien baker (for the lyric: faith healer come put your hands on me / a snake oil dealer / i'll believe you if you make me feel something)

Back in their room, the final microphone in place, the two women drifted around each other in the hush of a job well done. What Lilith lacked in dependability and affability, she certainly made up for with sharp reactions and attention to detail. It was easy to approve. Indeed, Zelda was still thinking about that kiss – that was, she was still thinking about how smart it had been to think to hide what they were doing like that, to make a scene no one would stay to inspect. She lay under the sheets, waiting for Lilith to return from the en suite so she could turn out the lights, and replayed the moment, with the cool distance of a surgeon, a theatrical director, a choreographer. She thought about the ways that a fight or a kiss were like a dance: a sequence of familiar steps, so easily nothing special without one’s own sense of personal rhythm. Objectively, she could admire the ease with which Lilith had moved under pressure, the almost predatory grace. It had taken only three beats for her to cover Zelda –– fingers on her forearm, the press of her body, her face drawing in. Even the way she kissed had a sense of intrinsic melody to it, Zelda considered, a push and pull with a beat of its own. She felt a tug of some difficult emotion, and wondered if she was jealous to find that this woman so good at her job.

She flushed a little and dragged the sheets further up under her chin. Perhaps they’d have to crack a window, the room was warm and the walls felt close.

Lilith emerged from the bathroom in a – frankly absurd - silk nightdress. In the dimness of the room the emerald coloured material had the same mystical dim sheen as the jewels in the sword Lilith had admired in the library. It might have been sophisticated, in a completely over-the-top manner, if not for the swooping neckline that left little to the imagination. Zelda let out something between a cough and a small laugh of shock. “Really?”

“Well,” Lilith replied, raising an eyebrow rather suggestively, “I doubt very much that the Countess married me for my money.” She slipped into the bed, soundlessly.

They’d been alone together much of the day, but there was something intensely intimate about the darkness, side by side, both of them staring up at the barely visible carved wood decoration above the bed. To Zelda it felt a little like floating on a raft in the middle of pure black seas. Shipwrecked. On the raft with her: a tiger. 

“Lilith?” The other woman hummed in response. “What did Morningstar do to you?”

She said nothing for a long minute. Zelda didn’t realise she was holding on to her breath.

“Perhaps it would be better to ask,” Lilith replied eventually, “what I did for him.”

Zelda said no more, stared up at the rolling white of the ceiling until she could see nothing else.

She fell into a fitful sleep full of thrashing waves, thick with foam: grotesquely mangled sea creatures lay stranded on the beach, long splinters of dark driftwood littered among them. She walked the sands, the length of the water. Above her, a sky devoid of stars –– a vast dark that stretched on and on –– but just out to sea, on the horizon, a bleeding cerulean blue that signalled the approach of dawn.

Out of nowhere, with the suddenness of dream-time, a hand grabbed her from behind; an arm clad in glistening silk curled around her waist. Lips pressed gently to the curve of her neck, reverently. 

When she span round, she was met with the hard face of Faustus Blackwood, teeth pulled back in a sneer. The tide crashed against the rocks.

Zelda woke with a start, heart pounding, hand flying to her chest.

The room was still suspended in darkness, but now the night was interrupted by moonlight cutting through the tall window adjacent to the bed. Silver talons of light decorated the floorboards, cut into slithers by the outside trees. At the window, caught in that other-worldly light, stood Lilith. In the glass, Zelda could just make out the cruel expression of her reflected double, a mirror-Lilith; in one hand, the woman in the window held an impossibly small flashlight. The beam was powerful enough to pass through the glass easily into the yard – off, on, off, on, off for a beat longer, on. _Musical_ , she thought. Zelda fought to keep her eyes open, but the harder she tried the heavier her eyelids felt. Dragged under, falling, she recalled the strange thing Lilith had said earlier: _perhaps it would be better to ask what I did for him._

* * *

Morning broke in a palette of pinks and yellows, muted by the pale, translucent curtains, which were pulled tightly shut. Zelda lay very still and watched that pastel-coloured portal fade away, consumed by swelling November blue. There would be frost on the trees, dew like hundreds of pearls across the grass. She had awoken with a feeling of bone-deep nausea, the sort that arises when you awaken from a nap in the middle of a hot afternoon in August. She had seen Lilith out of bed last night, but she had also seen a great number of other terrible things –– not all of these could be true. Perhaps none of them were.

She glanced over at the still-sleeping brunette, looking for evidence that supported that vision of her drenched in moonlight, ghostly in the window’s reflection. She slept now on her side, facing Zelda. Lilith’s face softened very little in sleep, but it was more serene –– it recalled marble carved to resemble human flesh, as if it might be cool to the touch. One hand was curled under her head, hair fanning across her pillow and broaching on Zelda’s. Somewhere beneath the sheets, the ridiculous nightdress was clearly uncomfortably tangled, for it drooped off one shoulder to reveal a frankly obscene amount of bare chest, sea-bird light and vulnerable.

Could a woman who woke in the middle of the night to betray her sleep like this? 

Zelda stared at the stupid carved ceiling, chewing on her bottom lip in anxious indecision. Only in the morning light could she see the pattern displayed up there: heavenly angels and patiently-waiting serpents.

* * *

Between breakfast and the day beginning in earnest, Zelda shot a surreptitious text to her nephew. She was far from certain that she hadn’t completely imagined Lilith and her torch – a hasty search of the other woman’s suitcase while she showered had turned out nothing of suspicion – but Zelda Spellman wasn’t going to be taken for a fool. She refused. She’d scowled as Lilith poured her orange juice at the table, completely unable to shake that dream-tinted image of her, even in the light of a new day. As they left the dining room, Zelda striding ahead down the corridor, she heard Lilith’s apologetic mutterings to Faustus: “No, no, she’s not good with mornings you see–” This rattled Zelda further. Did Lilith know that she knew? If, that was, she did know anything at all. She frowned into the mirror and adjusted the sports visor on her head. Even if she wasn’t being taken for a fool, she certainly looked like one.

They headed to Blackwood’s tennis courts in silence, unlike yesterday it hung heavy between them. As they passed through the gardens, the grass wet on their ankles, through their trainers, it looked, for a moment, as if Lilith might try to say something. She hesitated, and thought better of it.

To their collective surprise, Faustus was joined on the court by his wife, Constance, who had appeared in the preparatory mission documents, but hadn’t been mentioned, much less sighted, thus far on the trip. Had she been in the house the night before when they had snuck from room to room? They had been reckless, Zelda realised, it occurring to her all at once that they were precariously balanced here, as simple as it had looked so far. They were playing a very dangerous game.

“My wife, Constance, Faustus explained, looking - if anything - displeased at her presence, “couldn’t play a doubles game without a partner.” It was cold enough that their breath appeared before them in temporary clouds. Zelda shivered in her tennis skirt, feeling like she was back in compulsory Physical Education classes, freezing in some grey field. Constance Blackwood, for her part, merely nodded in greeting. It seemed she wasn’t overly pleased to be there either.

Zelda knew little about tennis, really she’d avoided all sports since her school days. Attending an all girls’ school was a trial by fire for this sort of thing anyhow, and Zelda had quickly realised she preferred tennis attire – all the white pleat had a certain athletic elegance to it, she thought – to the game itself. It wasn’t that she was _bad_ , nobody gets approved for fieldwork by MI6 if they suffer from terrible hand-eye co-ordination, but rather that she couldn’t understand the point of the thing. That was, she didn’t understand the point until that day. Playing against Faustus Blackwood, who took breaks from increasingly aggressive serves only to mutter obscenities about his wife, Zelda finally understood the epic highs and lows of competitive sport. It was one of the very few socially acceptable forms of violence.

Faustus sent another ball spinning over the net. Lilith dove for it with her racket, but it was moving with just too much force, and continued far past Zelda’s shoulder. Both women moved to fetch it, and Lilith purposefully collided with her, bumping their shoulders together long enough to whisper, “Let me gut the bastard, Spellman, and we’ll win by default.” That did seem preferable.

“You’d get blood all over your little tennis skirt,” she murmured back through gritted teeth, leaning over to tuck a strand of hair flying loose from Lilith’s ponytail behind her ear, so it looked to the Blackwoods as if they were simply having a moment.

Lilith shook her head in grim satisfaction. She rubbed her hands together against the cold. “Not a drop, I swear. I learned from the very best.”

As Faustus humourlessly yelled at them to get on with their serve, Zelda was stuck on the thought of who Lilith _had_ learned from. She was quick, clearly vastly intelligent, had the light touch of a professional, but she was also ruthless, erratic in a way that suggested raw instinct, not training. Zelda had encountered the well-formed products of the Russian intelligence machine, and that was not at all what Lilith was. There was something hot and dark and ravenous a centre of everything she did, a chasm of rage into which she always seemed to be on the verge of collapsing.

The ball sailed past Zelda’s ear. Blackwood cursed, and then - as if suddenly remembering who he was speaking to, why they were all there - apologised with strained politeness. He excused himself and his wife shortly after, but insisted that Lilith and Zelda stay as long as they wanted. He stated this wish of his with such force that it seemed rude to resist. There was little else to do here, besides.

“One more game, Spellman?” Lilith called across the court, “or are you worried you’ll get dirt on your polo?” Blackwood was certainly out of earshot, but Zelda glared in response at the use of her real name anyway. They couldn’t afford to be so lax.

Lilith didn’t even see her, she was sauntering over to the opposite side of the net, twirling her racket. Her skirt flipped cheerfully as she walked, all toned calves and swinging hips, cable-knit jumper tied nonchalantly over her shoulders. Zelda felt a surge of hating her, really hating her. The force of it floored her, so suddenly it appeared.

Lilith shook her hair from the pony tail with one hand, carding a hand through those curls. She looked tousled, a little out of breath even. There was mirth in those blue eyes when Lilith braced to serve, like she was laughing at her. Her red lips curled up on one side. There was a pinched colour to her cheeks out here in the cold. Zelda wouldn’t be mocked, she wouldn’t let this woman mock her.

She ground her teeth together, set her jaw, poised.

When Lilith sent the ball her way, Zelda smashed it back so hard it soared out of the court, far out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't expect this to be the sort of thing where i would just *write*, but i'm here for a good time, not a particularly coherent/well-written time, so here we are! i hope it is okay - thanks for being along with the ride if you're reading this!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it is snowing here, which i think has lent this chapter a rather mysterious, folkish feel! 
> 
> this chapter’s sad song (though this one is quite romantic i have to say) is devotion by the staves

“You should wear the white,” Lilith suggested, propping her head up in her hand just far enough to be able to inspect the two dress options Zelda was weighing up for dinner. She was lounged across the bed, already dressed in an elegant black number with yet another distracting neckline, flicking through a book Faustus had pressed on her from the library. Zelda had begrudgingly laughed when Lilith had described how – convinced Blackwood was going to pick a book from the highest shelf to impress her and thus discover the microphone they had planted - she had been forced to stage a coughing fit, leading to a red-faced Faustus whacking Lilith so hard on the back that she was sure he had cracked a rib or something similar.

“I don’t recall asking for your counsel,” Zelda replied rather haughtily. Even if she was actually married to this woman, she thought, she wouldn’t wear something just because she had suggested it. The thought of Lilith across the dinner table, admiring Zelda with the sort of possessiveness that comes from having dressed someone, it made her shudder. Though she had been erring towards the white dress anyway, and compromising on her choice now would be, in a way, letting Lilith win. She ducked into the bathroom to change, cinching the dress at the waist with a thin green belt and smoothing the lace with her hands. She secured her necklace herself, but the tiny fastenings between her shoulder blades proved too fiddly.

“My buttons, Morticia, if you’re not too busy doing nothing,” Zelda called, reopening the door to the bedroom with her hip.

After a moment and a handful of shuffling noises, Lilith slipped round the corner, one long hand on the doorframe. That woman was always _touching_ things. Zelda knew this must be true because she could easily recall a great number of them in vivid detail: Lilith’s hands on the tennis racket that afternoon, upper arms tensed, fingers on the sword hilt, on Zelda’s nail file, on her bare chest in the library. If they ever needed her prints, they’d have little trouble collecting them. Zelda glowered into the mirror. Now she’d decided, rather _realised_ that Lilith was a liability, all the evidence was right in front of her eyes.

Lilith eased up behind Zelda and, with those offending hands, swept her coppery hair forwards, exposing the bare flesh of her upper back. She buttoned quietly and quickly, with a certain seriousness, a commitment that the task perhaps did not call for. Zelda watched her in their reflection, mesmerised by how the glass transformed the severity of Lilith’s expression into an almost tender dedication. Was this what Faustus saw when he watched them together? She could only feel the faintest suggestion of Lilith’s fingertips at the nape of her neck, breath warm against her hair. It was strangely like floating above her body, looking at herself look at the other woman –– the flint-hardness of her own eyes, like stones that lie beneath the shallows.

Lilith cleared her throat, apparently finished, and Zelda mumbled her thanks, busied herself with lipstick. She absentmindedly blotted off almost everything she applied.

When Zelda turned to leave, she was surprised to find Lilith still installed against the doorjamb, simply watching Zelda finish up, her arms crossed across her chest. Subconsciously, Zelda mirrored this stance; she unwittingly misinterpreted Lilith’s body language, like a poorly executed translation exercise. On Zelda’s frame, Lilith’s almost feline curiosity appeared as nothing but pure defensiveness. Somewhere within the walls, the pipes rattled unhappily.

“I think you’re playing both sides,” Zelda said, never one to mince her words when it came down to it.

“Worried I don’t bat for your team?” Lilith smirked back, running with the innuendo. Her stare was hooded, perhaps even coy. Zelda let out a little frustrated sound, furious that all this huskily-delivered derision got under her skin so easily. Her face was hot again. She marched past Lilith, refusing to look at her but unavoidably clipping her shoulder as she pushed her way out the bathroom. This was all beyond ridiculous.

“How many times must I repeat that nobody wants Morningstar gone more than I do?”

“Why should I _believe you_?” Zelda hissed, struggling to maintain her composure, but aware that Blackwood could not, under any circumstances, overhear this conversation.

“Because I believed _him_.”

“So you did work for him.”

Lilith looked almost amused by Zelda’s choice of words, as if she considered them a euphemism. “I suppose. But not now and never again.” Her hands were flexed palm up in the universal signal of surrender. “I’m a free woman. Hell, I’d sooner put a gun to my own head.”

Zelda sank into a seat on the bed, hands to her temples. “Spellman, I will not stop until his entire world is burnt to the ground. No mercy. There is no future for me until I see his in ashes.”

It is difficult to think of trust as a choice. If trust lies outside of our remit, following laws of its own, we cannot blame ourselves when we find we have offered it to the wrong person. Zelda tried to unite the two Liliths she had witnessed in her mind, but how could she reconcile the moon-slicked, malevolent creature that had emerged from the glass the previous evening with the woman who stood before her now, disquieting and skeletal, mercurial as an unstruck match. The doppelgangers did not end there, but multiplied endlessly: a wholly imagined Lilith on the streets of St. Petersburg, enveloped in dark furs as she left Zelda’s niece out in the snow, the striking brunette stranger on the Thames embankment emerging from a cigarette mist, a streak of ivory and toned muscle skimming the courts that afternoon, the tacit warmth and coffee scent of the bespectacled woman in the passenger seat of her car, the medieval regent at the end of an antique sword. Janus had fewer faces, gods were confined to fewer forms.

“Alright.” Zelda said, her voice burdened with choice.

* * *

At dinner Zelda focused on her wine, draining glass after glass. Across the table from her, Lilith was doing the hard work, fluently lying about their rushed wedding preparations, their difficulty agreeing on decorations for their flat in Zurich, her occasional work advising for galleries in Munich, Paris, Barcelona. Though Faustus was clearly enchanted by Lilith’s storytelling, he still glanced down the table at Zelda a number of times, regardless of the presence of his wife. She sunk another glass of red, from her left, he attentively topped her up.

It was no wonder it was proving difficult to give herself over to Lilith – professionally speaking. The woman lied how she breathed, how she kissed, as easy as melody.

The evening’s entertainment, the flowing wine, dim lighting, and the jazz records playing to themselves in the background, unavoidably took Zelda back to another winter night she’d been trying to forget. Two short months in Louisiana, the permanent apprehensive rattle of the shutters in New Orleans, Marie LaFleur in candlelight, pouring her another drink. The entire room tactile with electricity, like running a palm over the rust-coloured velvet of Marie’s dress, hushed like the drag of a palm up a thigh.

Marie LaFleur had not been the person she had claimed to be. And now she was gone.

She glanced up at Lilith, who - despite being in full narrative flow, describing a completely fictional cousin’s completely fictional pregnancy to Constance – held her gaze assuredly. It seemed impossible not to stake some comparison. Though these were obviously quite separate situations, Zelda couldn’t sunder her emotions so clinically. She had trusted before: where had that got her? It embarrassed her that she didn’t know how to pause the film track now reeling in her mind, overlaying the present much like those old-fashioned projectors. She saw those nights as they had played out, the arch of spine and unseasonal rain, could feel the memory of touch to her waist, her jaw, even as she watched Lilith – gesturing wildly now with her table knife, eyes bright – over the rim over the glass. The room, blurred, like a camera in soft focus. She swore she heard the disconcert of shutters.

Abruptly Zelda stood, mildly distressing the contents of the table as she shot up and hastily excused herself for a cigarette.

Out on the back steps, the stillness of the dark reminded Zelda of the previous night’s dream, she had only the vaguest memory of it, the whisper of the waves, hard to pin down. Her hand shook as she brought the cigarette to her lips. She wasn’t sure that, if she knew that all roads travelled on, all her work, everything she had seen, would lead here, she would choose to do it all again. She’d seen faces full of anger, malice, regret or apology in the moment before their lights went out forever. Still she couldn’t recall many who had unbalanced her like this. Years in the field, her hand unshakable on the gun grip: she couldn’t unravel here, now, in the epilogue, shrouded in white lace and shivering on the steps of a country house, like an abandoned bride.

Lilith slid the patio doors shut behind her, joining Zelda on the steps. Their knees touched.

Was it trying to snow, the first gasp of winter out there in the grasp of the trees? It felt cold enough. The other woman handed her a cardigan, clearly rescued from Zelda’s own suitcase –– it was the same forest green as her belt.

“Thanks,” Zelda whispered, gratefully pulling it around her shoulders. She looked behind her, double-checking the doors were shut, switched to German for added privacy in any case. If Lilith was surprised, she did not show it. “I hate sitting in there next to him,” she explained, “I saw what they did to Dorcas. She was still a child. She had barely even started. It was so unfair.” She offered the half-finished cigarette to Lilith, in a moment of half-hearted camaraderie, and with her hands free wriggled into the cardigan properly, tugging it around her. “It feels–“ she stumbled on the words, the wine really weighing on her now. German wasn’t her best language anyway, French first, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic. “Unmöglich.” _Impossible._

“When we ruin him, he’ll rot out there in a cell. He’ll never hurt anyone else. Neither of them will.” Lilith pressed her shoulder to Zelda’s in a display of patient fortification, a gesture which was the antithesis of the way Zelda had barraged past her and out of the bathroom earlier. What had been Lilith’s crime, really? What tangible evidence did she have? The way Lilith’s eyes on her felt like the echo of a crime scene did not count.

When Zelda did not reply, Lilith put out the last flicker of the cigarette against the step, opened her other hand to reveal a small, white envelope. It was addressed to Zelda by first name only, and unopened.

“This just arrived, it was a challenge to prevent Faustus from opening it himself. Says he’s very particular about receiving mail to this address.” The way she handed it to Zelda made it clear they both recognised the size and weight of the items they had spent the previous evening hiding amongst Faustus’ possessions. “I hope you don’t feel the need to use that. But rig it if you want, I’m not hiding from you.” Zelda felt hotly ashamed of it, the physical manifestation of her distrust, despite a whole day of seething and conspiring.

“I don’t need it anymore,” she nodded, sliding it back into Lilith’s lap, wishing to rid herself of it. Lilith folded the envelope into a narrow strip and slipped it out of sight, tucked into the confines of her dress. No sense of smug satisfaction radiated off her, no anger. “What did you tell Blackwood?” She added, equally ashamed of having put them both in such an awkward position. Her message to Ambrose had perhaps - looking back - had a dramatic, desperate quality. 

Now Lilith did smile, a wry little upturn of her lips. “That it is the Countess’ birthday tomorrow, of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a hill i am willing to die on is that i feel zelda should have called lilith 'morticia' in canon at least once – i can picture her saying it so vividly


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short (but necessary) bit of the girlies just vibing/being chaotic before we head to the city and the Drama begins in earnest! 
> 
> today's song is hold the sun by maya hawke

The Countess’ fictional birthday was to be celebrated, the Blackwoods insisted, with a spectacular party at Faustus’ London penthouse. Zelda pleaded shyness, tiredness, displeasure, but nothing could stop the plan now it had been set into motion. As this was all truly Zelda’s fault – Lilith wouldn’t have had to lie at all if she hadn’t completely lost her composure – Zelda feared there was little she could do now but allow this to happen to her. Lilith insightfully observed that, unless he was going to pay a great number of strangers to attend such a party on short notice, which didn’t at all seem to be Faustus’ style, the evening would have to be populated with Blackwood and Morningstar’s own people. Indeed, perhaps this party was merely providing a convenient screen for some more insidious plot. Either way, from her office desk Hilda had assured her sister that this was an overwhelmingly positive development –– perhaps they would be bringing in far more people than they had bargained for. Zelda had to admit that she would like to go out with a bang. She always had liked a little flair.

With a sudden southernly move on the horizon, Zelda presumed Faustus would be keen to hurry along the business side of his deal with his guests, but little to nothing had been said about the exchange they were relying on in order to pin Blackwood’s enterprise. Not a word was mentioned at breakfast the next morning - Zelda had, thankfully, slept without interruption, and was feeling far more like her usual self - rather, Faustus announced his early departure, promising to be around to greet them in the capital later that day. 

He’d packed the women off for a morning of the countryside’s finest entertainment, blathering about fresh air and Zelda’s ‘frail disposition’. Though, when they’d finally returned from her cigarette break, she had feigned a migraine to get herself and Lilith out of the previous night’s dinner early, Zelda was certain Faustus had convinced himself of her fundamental weakness long before they’d arrived at the house. Probably while he’d still be conversing with the real Countess Lenzburg. It suited him that way, and so he saw little else.

Zelda was looking forward to giving him a shock.

For now, however, she was at his behest, so when he insisted she and Lilith pass the morning in his absence with a scenic exploration of the local countryside, she made sure to look wholeheartedly delighted at the prospect. The previous night she had reasoned with herself that there was really no amount of feigned pleasantry towards this man that wouldn’t be worth the eventual security of knowing he was safely out of society. She had concluded to throw herself into the task with a new vigour –– and this included trying far harder with Lilith. 

“Nice jumper, sunshine,” she teased - leaning into the spirit of this new truce - when Lilith had made it out of the front door, a cheery mustard coloured knit on display under her wool coat. She scowled in reply, a truly chilling expression, which only made the whole effect more amusing.

“We’d better finish up this job quickly because I am _scraping_ the bottom of that suitcase.” 

“Clearly.” 

“Shut it, Spellman. Get in the car.”

They set off into the crisp lavender of the morning. Zelda revelled in the clarity that came with leaving behind Blackwood’s house, she felt cut free. It was a treat to move with such purpose, with a destination in mind. This was the kind of work she was used to: the perimeters of their task were clearly defined. Lilith even pleasantly surprised Zelda by taking control of the rather out of date map they had been supplied with, even though the wind was making it rather difficult to read, and the brunette was clearly frustrated with the whole endeavour. At one point she shook the thing so hard that the paper tore along a crease. She looked such a sight on those country paths, map pulled over her head in frustration, that Zelda didn’t mind all the dramatics too much. It also allowed her to smugly announce her own _innate_ sense of direction, guiding them over a stile on the side of the road based on a ‘gut feeling’. 

As they stomped through field after field, they argued merrily about inane things like the best weapon for a fight at close proximity, or the best city in Europe to be stuck in for a year, alone. Lilith had immediately opted for a knife, while Zelda had insisted on establishing the character profile of their hypothetical opponent before she would make a decision, much to Lilith’s exasperation – _you’re so up-tight, I bet you think you’re above a simple stabbing anyway._ While Zelda had advocated for the virtues of Paris, Lilith had made a surprisingly passionate case for Prague, with its twisting stone back-streets and satisfyingly Gothic architecture. These arguments were forgotten when Lilith mentioned that she didn’t know any French anyway, sparking a spontaneous lesson in which Lilith would call out a word, and Zelda would translate.

“Murder,” Lilith called, lithely picking her way up the forest trail just ahead.

“ _Meurtre_.”

“The devil.”

“ _Le diable_.”

“Knife–“

“ _Le couteau._ Don’t you want to know any nice words?”

“Can’t remember the last time I had anything nice to say,” Lilith shrugged, shooting a droll little smile over her shoulder for Zelda’s sake.

When they reached a small river, one large and weathered piece of wood providing a crossing across the muddy water, Lilith offered up some sarcastic comment about pushing Zelda in. She felt that since they had met, she’d really made a poor show of the skills that had allowed her to stay out in the field for so long, the talents that had earned her a reputation as one of the British Intelligence service’s most reliable agents. Not one to be knowingly misrepresented, she chose the moment Lilith stepped out onto the makeshift bridge to demonstrate exactly how quickly she could move, agilely tipping Lilith off balance from behind with a twist of her arm, sending her stumbling into the shallows. She cried out in genuine surprise, suddenly ankle-deep in water.

“You _witch_ , Spellman,” Lilith seethed, picking her way back on to dry ground. Though she was clearly unhappy about the state of her shoes - which squelched unhappily as she walked - Zelda didn’t think she missed a glimmer of respect behind the bravado.

“Getting cold feet?” Zelda blinked back, face the picture of innocence.

By the time they reached the peak of the hill, the trees thinning to reveal a grassy plateau, Zelda was overheating in her many layers, tucking her woollen gloves into the pocket of her tartan coat. Now, without the trees to obscure their view, it was possible to see for miles across the collection of small villages that bordered Faustus’ house. From this distance it looked unnaturally perfect, all those rust-coloured roofs, winding, narrow roads, and ochre fields, the curl of a church tower, with its smattering of gravestones. Somewhere further down the trail a young child shrieked with delight, the sound of excited footsteps followed. A thin mist hung over the horizon, draped along the rooftops like a piece of silk gauze, the sun so pale it almost resembled the moon.

“Lovely,” Lilith exhaled. When Zelda looked across, the other woman’s eyes were trained on her, the same shade of blue as the sky.

“Hm?”

“The French word––“

“ _Charmante_.”

“Right.” Lilith looked at her oddly, her smile slightly crooked.

* * *

Lilith offered to drive them back, and, despite a rather unnerving joke about having her licence taken from her, Zelda allowed it, sinking into the passenger seat.

It wasn’t a long drive, but it was enough to convince Zelda that she would never get in a car with the other woman behind the wheel ever again. It didn’t matter where she was going, Zelda would not be joining her. Perhaps she could get on to someone in London about getting Lilith banned internationally. In one particularly ropey moment, they had squeezed through a non-existent gap between a tractor and a car –– Lilith cackling like a complete mad woman as they emerged on the other side.

Despite their near-constant bickering, Zelda was regretful that they had to return to the real job at hand, which she put down to her feelings of animosity towards Faustus.

As they drove up through the gates towards the house, she was surprised to see someone waiting for them outside the door. She squinted, trying to identify the dark head of hair –– when they finally drew up close enough to see the woman’s face, Zelda paled, freezing with her hand on her seatbelt.

“What?” Lilith said, speaking quietly, barely moving her lips. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.” Zelda swallowed thickly. Metaphors and similes had no place here, for she was really looking at the face of a dead woman.

At least, Agatha Night was supposed to be dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> massive thank you again to everyone following this - it is such an unexpectedly lovely thing to know there are people out there reading as a write? idk at a time when social interaction is at a minimum it is really helping me out!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this, and the next, chapter are really what everything has been working towards, so i hope you enjoy the unfolding drama! 
> 
> i made a little pin board of vibes, if you're a visual person and you'd like to check it out: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/lauramarlings/only-the-strong/
> 
> this chapter's sad song is: heart by the weather station

Zelda unpinned a final piece of hair, letting the spiral unravel and then delicately brushing sections out into smooth curls. The ritual of getting ready soothed her somewhat, the familiar motions, the weight of the brush in her hand. By the window, which was so large it took up an entire wall, Lilith paced back and forth, producing a gentle rustling sound as the tulle of her dress bristled against itself, over and over. The fabric was emblazoned with hundreds of miniature stars, a whole galaxy, and now night had settled she cut a shadowy figure, drifting up and down in front of the pitch darkness of London's cityscape. If Zelda wasn't so uneasy herself, she would have snapped at the other woman to stand still for one minute, but, in this case, Lilith's disquiet was understandable. 

Things had begun to take a strange turn when Agatha had appeared at Blackwood's manor, suited, clipboard in hand, ready to assist them in their transfer to London. If she had recognised Zelda - who had known her since she was in her early teens - she made no recognition of it. In fact, her face barely moved at all. While it became quickly apparent that they had not been, as she had feared, somehow outwitted by Faustus, Zelda couldn't push aside the queasy feeling of re-encountering someone in the last place they should be. Something was profoundly wrong. 

As much as she desperately wanted to pull Agatha to one side, Constance lingered all the way through lunch, and they were packed into the car and set onto the motorway without the briefest moment of opportunity. 

On the road, Zelda had broken the news to mission control while Lilith drove, proving that she could, in an emergency, follow the highway code. As fields and woods slowly metamorphosed into beige suburbs, she recounted to Lilith the plan for the evening: how they would manoeuvre Faustus into a trap that even he could not wriggle out from, vanishing into the night, hopefully with Agatha, and leaving a different team, made up of some of Sabrina's friends, to detain Blackwood and his people. They needed to get out of the way because – unarmed and unprotected in silly gowns - they would provide a greater hinderance than help. 

The Blackwoods' London apartment was the opposite of their claustrophobic country home, set at the top of a one-hundred floor skyscraper in the heart of the city, the windows stretched from ceiling to floor, making it feel as if the city were encroaching on every room. Everything was marble-surface and chrome, a near parody of modern living. In the kitchen, where they had sipped black coffees on arrival, Zelda had hissed into the shell of Lilith's ear: _at least this proves that money cannot buy taste_. Lilith had almost choked on her drink, spluttering.

Lilith had been tasked with heading across town to collect their dresses for the evening, and Zelda felt her absence more than she thought she would. She sat on their bed, feeling displaced by the change of scenery, and flicked through Lilith’s copy of _Faust,_ surprised to find the occasional passage underlined.

Aptly, Faustus had cornered her just after, leading her through to his reception room. There, in the centre, wrapped in plastic, was the painting Faustus was trying to sell to her. He peeled back the protective cover for her. It was so beautiful, in its faded, timeless glory, that it knocked the breath out of her. The landscape captured in impressionistic pastels, a cliff side covered in lilacs, the sky an endless, familiar blue. Two women in frothy white looked out into the waves, like moored ships, aching for the water. One of the women clutched an orange parasol, ravaged by the wind.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, not having to perform her emotion. She felt a glimmer of pre-emptive triumph as she imagined getting the painting out of this house, putting it back on a gallery wall, where everyone could see those happily drifting ships, like clouds on the water. 

Faustus stepped in behind her, as if to inspect the painter's handiwork, his breath hot on Zelda's neck. She suppressed a flinch. 

"It is worth every penny," he agreed, though he was clearly unmoved by the artwork itself, "a perfect specimen, completely off the authorities' radar. A perfect fake has been hanging in the Chicago gallery it was lifted from. Not a soul has noticed thus far." 

Zelda wondered if the forged painting, on the other side of the world, could produce this effect. Would it be more beautiful for the sheer skill involved in creating the lie? If it was a perfect replica of something real, did it even qualify as a fake? 

When she looked up at Faustus, feeling the weight of his anticipation for a response, she realised he was not even looking at the painting, but at her. She opened her mouth to give some innocuous response, but he brought a finger up to her lips, silencing her. 

"I cannot condone your attempts to seduce me, Countess," he began, and Zelda fought to keep a look of complete bewilderment from her face. She had certainly not been attempting anything of the sort. "I understand that money is not everything, power, too, can be very attractive." She was too busy trying to process his line of thinking to even anticipate what was about to happen before he began to lean in. Instinctively, out of some bone-deep repulsion, she brought a hand up to his chest, keeping him at bay while she gathered her head. His smug smile implied he took this as a challenge; he was prying her hand from him with force when a small, pointedly awkward cough from the doorway caused him to abruptly pause. 

There Lilith stood, two dress bags over her arm, face like a forest fire. Zelda released a breath she hadn't even realised she'd been holding. 

"The painting is perfect," Lilith observed, with the light touch of someone intent of changing the atmosphere, handing the dresses to Zelda, who gratefully held them to her chest, like a shield, as she crossed to inspect the painting. "The paintwork is so delicate and yet so full of life." She mused on it a little longer, and the silence between the three of them buzzed with tension. Zelda hugged the garment bags a little closer to her, staring into the blue of the painted sky. 

"You should have told us, though, no? About the frame?" Lilith added, feigning disappointment, or perhaps simply displacing it. 

Faustus twitched a little, fidgeting with his collar. A dark cloud was passing over his face. "What about it?" he asked, impatiently. 

"That it is not original," Lilith tutted, "it really does decrease the value. We'll have to talk negotiations over dinner." And with that, she had steered a still-shocked Zelda into their room, shutting the door, and locking it. 

Zelda smoothed over her hair one final time, her expression hard in the mirror precisely because she felt so vulnerable. The dress wasn't helping, striking red silk, cut low across the chest – perhaps she was literally in danger of exposing herself. 

"How did you know, earlier, about the painting?" she asked Lilith, rising from the vanity and crossing to the bed, where her heels were waiting. 

"Oh, I didn't. I just made that up," Lilith shrugged in reply, "thought it would piss him off." 

It fell quiet between them again, the brunette still vibrating with an active agitation that Zelda had not seen before, so used now to her usual sultry repose.

“Thank you,” Zelda breathed, after another beat had passed between them, “for stepping in, you didn’t have to-“

“Do you think I was going to let that sewer rat maul you?”

“I can fend for my-“

“Zelda, give it a rest. I know you can handle yourself. It was step in or stand there retching in disgust in the corner like a dog, so I chose-“

“Well, I’m glad you did.”

“Sure. I’ll pick up your slack any time, you know I eat men like him for breakfast.” She was fiddling with her pocket knife, not even really looking at Zelda, purposefully it seemed. She realised Lilith had never used her first name before, not when they’d been like this, alone.

For years, decades even, Zelda Spellman had been doing things for other people, as other people: for her country, in another country. Every decision she had made had been carefully measured, considered. She did the sensible thing when she could, and when she could not, she did the thing that was best for the people around her. She couldn’t remember the last time she did something just because she wanted to — especially not something that was definitely a bad idea.

Lilith looked beautiful by the window, illuminated by the supernatural glow of neon from the buildings behind, the pulse of the night out there, her knife glinting as she admired it: foreboding like an avenging angel, terrifying like the centre of the black hole, dress like a net full of drowning stars, but beautiful. It did something to Zelda to see her so still, so thoughtful. It as clear that the act of scholar came easily to her because she held things with such magnitude, which such reverence. They became precious by virtue of her touch, by virtue of her protection.

“Lilith?” The brunette hummed to show she was listening, but still she examined her weapon. Zelda placed a hand on Lilith’s pale forearm, and she finally met her gaze. “Stop saying such ridiculous things and just let me thank you.”

And then, making up for thirty years of doing the right thing, Zelda stepped in to press their lips together.

She willing gave herself over to the motion of it, the magnetic drift of their bodies, a closeness like interlacing, like sea-foam on shore. The knife clattered to the floor, hilt hitting the floorboards. She did not think, her mind reduced to a burning ember amidst a house ablaze: Lilith’s hands seared in her hair, grasping, on her waist, lips to her jaw,teeth to the skin beneath her ear. She gasped, hands slipping under the crossing straps at the back of Lilith’s dress, dragging down the expanse of her back.

A sharp rap on the door interrupted. They pulled apart, faces still so close that Zelda could feel Lilith’s eyelashes on her cheek. Blackwood’s voice summoned them, muffled through the wood of the door. Zelda scowled. Music was blaring, the party was already in full swing. Exhaling slightly shakily, she ducked away from Lilith, heart still racing, and grabbed her clutch bag. She open it to check on her gun and lipstick and hung the bag from her shoulder: ready to go.

Lilith was utterly still by the window. She had the strangest expression on her face, like she was waiting for time to catch up her with her. Zelda was troubled by the strange tug in her chest: something like humiliation, confusion, and raw tenderness rolled into one.

“See you on the dance floor,” she half-joked, eyes stinging, and headed out into the music.

* * *

In Faustus' defence – not a sentence Zelda ever imagined herself formulating, even silently to herself – he, or some underling of his, had done a rather impressive job in getting a birthday party together in under twenty-four hours. She wondered if this event was always in the diary, if the Countess had similar provided a convenient excuse for it all. The open-plan, modern penthouse space held more people than seemed possible, they were crawling out of every surface, decked out in their finest clothes. The floor was awash with glittering tides and eddies: gold sequin, the luster of black velvet, the sheen of silver. A flute of champagne in every hand only added to the weightless shimmer that extended across every space in the room. Across the room, Lilith's head was thrown back in laughter that didn't quite reach her eyes; she was like rupture at the centre of that copper haze, a gaping abyss. Their eyes met over all of those heads and Zelda looked down into her glass, the liquid fizzing exactly like her stomach. 

She needed to focus.

In her periphery, she could just make out the Nicholas Scratch boy her niece seemed so taken by, wearing his disguise as a member of the catering team rather poorly, mostly due to the way he scrutinised every face in the crowd with dark, hawk-like eyes. Elspeth and Melvin weren't doing a much better job, leaning shiftily against adjoining walls. She sighed despairingly: what would become of these children when she stepped down? Who would establish better standards for field performance? 

Her eyes scanned faces, hopefully more subtly than the younger members of her team, and she quickly identified Agatha, dressed in midnight blue silk. If she had spotted her former friends and agents amongst the party guests, she did not seem alarmed. When she slipped out onto the balcony to take a call, Zelda followed silently. 

The call seemed inane, a business call about Faustus' flights it seemed. Agatha responded to the person on the other end of the line in perfect monotone, empty of all intonation or emotion. When she turned to head back into the party, Zelda was blocking her way. "Can I help you?" she asked, her smile sickly sweet in a way that disturbed Zelda. While Agatha had a variety of qualities that made her an excellent asset to the British services, she was _not_ a sweet girl.

"There's no time to ask questions right now, young lady, as many as I may have. We're getting out of here this evening, so you need to be ready when I give the signal. I'd rather you came as you are, but if you feel you absolutely _must_ pack a bag, you'd better go and do it right now. We–" 

Zelda trailed off when Agatha dissolved into child-like laughter, her shoulder shaking uncontrollably, eyes scrunched shut. 

"Agatha." Zelda gripped her shoulder, jostled her as if she was trying to rouse a sleepwalker. Still she laughed, so uncontrollably that it ceased to be merely irritating and crossed into disturbing; she laughed as if she was possessed by something inhuman. "Agatha, we are leaving." 

All of a sudden, the girl's hand whipped out to slap Zelda hard across the face, a loud smack resounding. Her long nails scratched Zelda's cheek in the process, jarring her neck, while the glass of champagne flew out of her grip, smashing on the concrete in a million tiny shards. Zelda reeled back, clutching her smarting cheek with her opposite hand. When she pulled herself upright, Agatha was still smiling. Behind the eyes, there was nothing.

Defeated, she retreated back into the warmth of the party, her head spinning, both from the shock of being hit and the distance in Agatha's eyes. Where had that girl gone? And what had chased her out of her body like that? 

She could feel the white heat of raised skin on her cheek where Agatha's nails had made contact. It throbbed, but she forced herself to ignore it – she couldn't draw attention to the wound. She needed to find Lilith, let her know that they were leaving with or without Agatha. 

If the room had had a gentle thrum to it before, it now seemed to be spinning. The uptempo music, mix of sweet perfumes and chatter giving the impression of being on some particularly unforgiving fairground ride. With relief, she finally spotted Lilith by the entrance, black tulle streaming behind her, shoulder muscles tensed, jaw set. Zelda began picking her way over there, apologising half-heartedly as she collided with various guests, still recovering her balance. She was about five paces away when she spotted a man's hand on Lilith's exposed bicep, it was a strong hand, tanned, rugged. 

The owner of the hand shifted, just slightly, and, in doing so, ceased to be eclipsed by Lilith's hair. Zelda blinked into the easy, smiling face of Luke Morningstar, who looked through her, barely perceiving her presence. 

Her blood ran cold. The walls shifted as she felt her heart plummeting like a stone tossed into a lift shaft. 

He muttered something to Lilith in Russian that Zelda could barely make out, but she caught the end. Even with her limited understanding of Russian, she understood. 

_моя жена._ My wife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god!!! was lilith a double agent all this time!!!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we are - just this and an epilogue to go now
> 
> (s c r e a M) 
> 
> warnings here for some much more graphic violence than in previous chapters! 
> 
> this chapter's song is strange by celeste, which appears briefly in-text. i know, so 2011 of me but if you want to suffer, go listen because it is A LOT for these two wheeew and also where the idea for the fic came from!

Zelda was fighting her way back to the bedroom, when Faustus caught her by the arm, pulling her back through the slipstream to the centre of the room. He tapped on a glass, signalling a speech, and a hush settled. She blinked back hot, angry tears, aware of the sheer number of eyes on her. Faustus began a pretentious speech, during which the crowd laughed and clapped on cue. Lilith appeared by her side like a wraith, signalled only by the warmth of her body. The room erupted into applause as Blackwood finished, holding both his hands up in thanks like a television host, teeth gleaming.

“What’s wrong?” Lilith muttered under her breath, taking Zelda in a firm hold as a new song began, slower in tempo, several couples falling into a dance around them. She reluctantly looped her arms over Lilith’s bare shoulders, untangling them from her hair. She couldn’t believe she had stood like this less than an hour previously, and voluntarily pressed her lips to the other woman’s in a moment of genuine need. She thought about Morningstar’s hand on Lilith’s arm and felt a wave of sickness.

“I saw you with him,” she replied, “I know you’ve been lying through your teeth.”

“Ah, one last rodeo,” Lilith shrugged, “for old time’s sake.” She was so flippant about it, so crass.

“You disgust me,” Zelda choked out with all the malice she could muster. Admittedly, this was not a lot, and it sounded despondent to her own ears. Mostly she was tired. [The low, jazzy song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5XHTHaH80E) played out:

_If I could, I'd pull your strings for one more dance / But I can’t… / Say isn’t it strange?_

“God, do you still not believe I’m on your side? Is that what this is about?” Lilith blinked, clearly astonished in a way that made Zelda’s blood boil over. Her grip tightened on Zelda’s waist –– perhaps it was meant to be a reassuring gesture, but it only felt restrictive, possessive. She said _do you still not believe_ as if there was anything else Zelda could possibly think. She betrayed with such cruel confidence. Lilith lowered her voice another note, raising an eyebrow, “Zelda, _you_ kissed me.”

“Exactly,” Zelda snapped. She’d kissed her and it had felt like ripping her ribcage open and laying her heart on the carpet.

The singer crooned:

_Isn't it strange?_

_How people can change_

_From strangers to friends_

_Friends into lovers_

_And strangers again…_

Zelda swallowed thickly, she couldn’t do this anymore. Filled with a combination of fury and desperate sadness, she slipped out of Lilith’s grip, fleeing out of the heart of the crowd with great difficulty. Lilith called her name, but she would not turn back, she would not turn into the full beam of those eyes, their expression pleading.

Zelda decided it must be guilt, regret. A liar’s eyes –– she’d seen enough of those to last her a lifetime.

She tried not to think about all the times people had looked into her own eyes and seen mistruths brimming there, and blustered out into the corridor, which was lit in a chilling green glow, following the walls to the set of stairs opposite the lift. They led out onto the roof. The cold air had an immediately soothing effect: she took a long, shuddering breath. Leaning against a set of metal railings at the roof’s edge for support, Zelda tilted her head up to the heavens. Stars were a rare sight in the city, though she took comfort in the idea that they always were there, above the dirt and fog and looming clouds.

Her eyes slipped shut for a moment and she tried to ground herself: it was like trying to drag herself up out of the swamp, the folds of her clothing clogged with dank river water. She focused on the cool rigidity of the metal against her hip, pushing away thoughts of a mesh full of silver stars, eternally caught, of Morningstar’s tanned hand, the knuckles freshly bruised. Out there was the gentle whine and hush of the city going about its evening, as familiar as lullaby –– car horns, the far-off slam of doors, the snatch of a voice. It reminded Zelda of the night she had first met Lilith, the moment this path had unravelled before them, predestined. A sense of unreality had settled over them as they had stood, looking out on the water, immoveable fixtures amidst the swell of the crowd. What had been real since then? In retrospect, the days immediately behind them did have the soft glow of a dream, Zelda did feel the gaping absence of the somnambulist.

When her eyes flickered open then, and she saw Faustus before her, she felt inclined to believe he too was an apparition, some phantom stepped out of her reverie. He had a gaunt look, emerging out of the shadows, that gave an illusion of translucence to his skin, as if you could see his skull through his face.

“Countess–“ he began, his tone hushed, hurried. Zelda was perplexed by his use of her pretend title. If Lilith was with Morningstar, and Faustus worked for them, surely he knew she was a fake. Why keep up the pretence apart from to mock her? His expression was set into the deep frown of someone tasked with delivering bad news. “There is something you must know, about your wife.”

“Come now, Faustus. Let us not be coy,” she scowled, unable to stand there and continue to be made a fool of. Perhaps he had known all this time, the entire trip –– they had all been making a complete idiot of her, stringing her along. And for what? Would he kill her now? She had never thought about him like that, not really. She had spent days sneering at him behind closed doors, rolling her eyes at his forced charm when he turned his back, but she had not considered him as the killer the facts laid him out to be. Perhaps she had underestimated him.

Her hand, which had been helping to prop her against the railing, slipped subtly into her bag, closing around the gun Ambrose had given her. It was a flimsy thing, no good for long range really, but just enough up close, at a push.

She carefully watched the way Faustus moved as he sloped towards her, the pull of his suit jacket, the way it hung from his shoulders, looking to detect the weight of a weapon on him. She felt fairly confident he was not armed, she could sense it in the tentative way he approached her. It was not the way you walked towards a deer in the wood if you had a rifle strapped to your back. But, perhaps he was too clever, or too stupid, to reveal himself in those ways.

He looked surprised by her response, first alarmed, and then relieved.

“So you know then? What she is?”

“That she has betrayed me? Yes.”

He tutted, as one would to soothe a child, and stepped closer, his dress shoes crisply sounding against the concrete. There was an echo, despite the openness of the space. Her hand twitched slightly, firming around the grip of her weapon. The slight wind fluttered against the silk of her dress, the movement flag-like, red and taunting.

“Such a deceit, and that _man_ – whoever he was, the Russian brute – probably here to help her take the painting from you. I can’t imagine how you are feeling.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Why were they still talking about the _painting_ as if that was the most important thing at stake here? Why was he skirting around naming Morningstar, pretending not to know him? Just to speak so ambiguously of a man as dangerous as that would be enough to put Faustus’ life in danger. It simply wouldn’t be worth the risk of being caught out, unless he really did need to feign ignorance with her. She really looked at him, at his open body language, lax shoulders, face twisted into a compelling portrait of sympathy. And it clicked that, for whatever reason, he really didn’t know who she was. He still absolutely believed she was the Countess, even as he processed who Lilith was to Morningstar. 

He tried to move in closer, a hand out to comfort her, but she held her own out in a universal signal of distress, ushering him out of her space. He nodded, granting her this, and stepped aside to lean against the vast wooden board that decorated one stretch of the roof adjacent to her. At one point, it had clearly displayed a glossy advertising banner, but now, either due to erosion by the weather or simple misuse, only a single strip of the torn printed matter remained, framing Faustus’ head and shoulders. It perhaps had once been an advertisement for the luxury apartments, but now was merely a streak of silver-blue, worn away by the elements.

“I must return to Zürich immediately,” she said, testing the waters. When his face did not fold into derision, she knew her suspicions were correct. Faustus wouldn’t be able to restrain from lording his superior knowledge of the situation over her, to manipulate his position. If he had caught her out, she would know; if he thought she had fooled him for a moment, she would suffer for it.

Suddenly, from somewhere below them, a shot resounded: followed quickly by the smashing of glass, the pandemonium of frightened bodies, raised voices, a scream. Both of their heads were snapped to the staircase, up which a set of footsteps hastily rattled. 

Lilith practically fell through the doorway onto the roof, her dress torn, stars trailing behind her, shards of glass suspended in her hair, her expression feral. If she had looked like a forest going up in flames before, now her eyes were like the centre of an explosion, the molten layer below the crust of the earth –– she was both difficult to look at and to look away from.

In a moment of misplaced chivalry, which must have stemmed from some unresolved sexual tension he felt resided between himself and the Swiss heiress – she _would_ live another day so her could have his way with her, perhaps - Faustus squared up to Lilith, steadying himself for a fight. He spat something at her in poorly pronounced Russian. It seemed to gesture at her inability to know her place as nothing more than Morningstar’s whore. He reached for a gun and Zelda silently kicked herself for missing it, strapped as it was to his calf. Lilith’s knife sailed with a supernatural grace and speed out of her hand. Her aim was exemplary. The blade span through the air and lodged itself firmly in Faustus’ shoulder with a dull _thud_ , pinning him to the peeling paper of the advertising board. He swore in a mixture of pain and shock, legs seeming to almost give way beneath him.

“When will the world learn that women should be in charge of everything?” Lilith sighed, inclining her head at his tensed form, his face contorting in pain, before turning to Zelda. “We have to go now, Spellman – change of plan.”

Zelda’s hand felt clammy on the handle of the gun, which she still held onto, tucked out of sight inside her bag. To her right, Faustus groaned in pain; when she looked at Lilith she too felt like an open wound. Every part of her ached with a desire to believe, to trust this woman to catch her. Lilith was bleeding from a cut above her eyebrow where a piece of glass had clearly become lodged, red trickling down the high curve of her cheekbone. Her hair glittered with debris, the effect was preternatural.

“What happened?” Zelda asked, too stunned to elaborate.

“Morningstar. The Scratch boy noticed you were gone and jumped the gun, so to speak.” So the plan was already in motion, that explained the shot they had heard. “I had to intervene – didn’t think you’d forgive me if I let him shoot your niece’s little boyfriend. I’m in enough trouble as it is.” She gave a wry little half-smile, brushing away the blood with the back of her hand. Zelda’s heart stuttered in her chest, like someone had rammed on the brakes.

“The kids have got him tied up for the minute, but he’s absolutely _thrilled_ I set him up like this, and that Melvin’s a horrible shot–“

“He always was pathetic on the firing range,” Zelda nodded ruefully. The pieces slotted together and she finally realised that Lilith really hadn’t been lying to her, but to Morningstar. She’d led him here with false promises, not actually double agent, just wearing the mask of one. She managed a small smile herself, on which balanced a shamefully-offered apology.

Lilith continued: “I give it about three minutes before he’s up here looking for me, so if you’re done flirting with Blackwood–“ Zelda scoffed, finally releasing her hold on the gun in her purse. “We should probably get going. We’ll have to leave the painting–“

“That’s a shame. I'm quite fond of it,” she shot back.

“Me too, Spellman,” Lilith’s face cracked into real grin, all teeth, “but I’ll buy you a new one.”

A light from one of the towering buildings that crowded them passed over Lilith’s face, a wash of vibrant blue that made her look - for just a moment - as if she were suspended in water, floating. Zelda realised then, that perhaps she’d made her decision days ago. Maybe, from the moment she’d looked over in the car and seen Lilith quietly reading, awash with golden morning light, she’d known that she’d take her hand and follow her anywhere. If she’d sold her heart to a devil, she’d done so willingly, she did so without remorse.

Lilith extended a hand to her, mouth open to begin another dry retort, no doubt, when another gunshot rang out, from below, cutting her off before she had begun. Zelda felt it in the ground, the vibration of it.

In a moment that had the drag, the eternity, of filmic time, they looked at each other with confusion, under which lay a greater clarity than ever before. The lucid blue of Lilith’s eyes was the blue of the painting, of the sea and the waves crashing against the cliff: the blue the wind-ravaged woman with her orange parasol ached for.

There was something strange about Lilith’s body, she noticed, something crooked, something painful in the stretch of her muscles over bone. Something suspended like the moment.

Zelda had the feeling you get only in a dream, where you miss the last step in a steep staircase, and the world falls out from under you. Her heart clenched, she landed in the second after the gunshot –– took a step forward and found nothing there.

Lilith crumpled to the ground. A torn sheet of paper.

Behind her, stood Morningstar, gun raised.

From above, like the intercessions of heavenly beings: the whirr of a helicopter, the crackle of an intercom.

Zelda sunk to a crouch by the body, hands as red as her dress.

Heavenly help had arrived a moment too late; the stars were bleeding out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know i wouldn't... right?


	9. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> our epilogue song is: cowboy like me by taylor swift! (i mean 'forever is the sweetest con' come on)

The church is quiet with anticipation like the dawn-break over fresh snow fall: white on white on white. Waiting. The pews stand to attention, a held breath, drawing the eye incessantly forward. The plush navy carpet muffles any steps, contributes to the feeling of suspended moment, of a secret being kept. The altar at the front of the room is draped in streams of black velvet.

Sabrina Spellman and Nicholas Scratch - who is sporting a rather alarming bruise to the jaw - are sat on the right front row. They too are dressed entirely in black, apart from Sabrina's headband, which tastefully matches the floral arrangements. Deep, blood-red roses line the aisles, interspersed with plumes of foliage, twisting vines of ivy. Behind them sit Ambrose and Prudence, also in funereal attire; she holds the hand of a dazed Agatha Night, whose hair has been lovingly plaited into two pigtails, a style far too old for her age. She looks distant, but not unhappy. 

Most seats are empty. Outside it is trying to snow, though the city is so unused to this kind of magic that none of the guests have quite noticed yet.

Occupying the front pew to their left is Zelda Spellman. Though characteristically poised, shoulders back, it is clear she is openly crying from downward tilt of her head. Tears are streaming silently down her cheeks, when she blinks it is through smudges of grey kohl. Where the weak December sunlight is straining through the stained glass in the walls above them, it casts a kaleidoscope of jewel-coloured fragments across her face: warm oranges, greens, yellows, pinks, blues. She inhales a shuddering, heaving breath, a half-choked noise, and rubs the heels of her hands against her face, clearly embarrassed. 

A neatly folded tissue finds its way into her damp hand: at the end of it, a woman who wears black a little better than the other posers in the room. Zelda takes the tissue gratefully and dabs at her face aimlessly, sniffing back yet more tears. 

Lilith, too, is decorated with those stained-glass refractions: half of her sharp features soaked in rapturous holy light, the other half, unreadable. She places one hand solidly on Zelda's thigh; her hands are always cold.

The redhead is the only member of the group not dressed in black, instead she is wearing an unseasonably floral dress. It is cloyingly sweet, a pastel foam, in a way that not only hangs strangely about her, but also clashes with her hair. If she did not choose the garment herself, she wears it with pride – in spite of, or perhaps because of, the wishes of whoever did. It looks a little crumpled, as if it has been sitting in a suitcase, tucked under a bed. 

At the front of the church, her baby sister is renewing her vows. The wedding was less than twelve months ago, so they are certainly not yet out of date, but, as someone very important was missing the first time round, she had insisted. With a second ceremony came much less expectation, which explained the unusual choice of theme: a Gothic fantasy inspired by all of Dr. Cee's favourite horror flicks. Hilda herself was sporting a tall black and white wig, just like the bride of Frankenstein, which Zelda had pronounced ridiculous. Her husband smiled to reveal a pair of plastic vampire fangs. 

"It's a complete _farce_ ," Zelda hissed at Lilith, when the couple had finished their - admittedly very sweet - vows. Her trembling bottom lip betrayed her true feelings – she was not only touched that her sister would go to such lengths to give her something she had selfishly missed, she was also grateful to be there to attend at all. They were almost not so lucky. Finished fixing her face, she smoothed her skirt self-consciously, tucking the crumpled tissue into her coat pocket. Very tentatively, staring straight ahead the whole time, she slipped her hand into Lilith's – found her open, willing. 

Her eyes fogged up again. 

* * *

It was snowing in earnest when they spilled out of the church; though it was only late afternoon, dusk had already settled. The younger half of their group split off, vanished in a flurry of outwear and easy laughter in the direction of whatever restaurant Ambrose had chosen as their final destination. They weren't hard to miss in their uniform black, a group of oddly cheerful goths, a murder of crows. Hilda and Dr. Cee lingered in the church, last seen staring into the front-facing lens of Hilda's phone camera, heads tucked close together and some slightly menacing stained glass featuring a devil in the background. 

The steps of the church were covered, so, despite the cold, Zelda perched on the highest stone and struck up a cigarette. Wrapping her long leather coat tighter around her, Lilith sank to a seat next to her. She lacked her usual smoke-like grace, the gun-shot wound in her abdomen still tender, though for someone quite literally stitched together, she felt satisfyingly solid to Zelda. Their shoulders and knees pressed together and, though they sat in silence for a long moment, this too felt like a kind of communication, a wordless affirmation. She passed to cigarette over to Lilith, appreciating the way she held it in those long fingers, the press of it to her lips where it had once touched her own. The snow drifted in the streetlights in spirals, with the elegance of a waltz, melting as soon as it touched the gravel pavements. 

"What now?" Zelda asked. A sense of closure had fallen upon her, the evening descending like a vignette at the end of an old film. What happens after the screen fades to black? Can the story continue on without us? 

Lilith tipped her head skywards releasing a plume of smoke that lingered over them. She returned the cigarette , the back of her hand brushing Zelda's palm. Snow was sticking to Zelda's hair, to the flowers on her dress. 

The brunette reached out, sweeping a single snowflake from Zelda's cheek. 

"I've heard Prague is nice this time of year," she replied. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that is it! i hope you enjoyed the rollercoaster and a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who has been along with me. i truly haven't written anything for about eight years, so this has been such a treat and all the lovely comments have been such a boost! (next chilling adventures story already in the works so watch this space 😈 )


End file.
